Browserless · finding the first customer
He found his first customer in someone else's issue tracker.
Joel Griffith built a hosted browser because he needed one. Then he went to where developers with the same problem were already asking for help. This is his account, in four moments.
- The starting pointA problem he had
- The placePuppeteer's GitHub issues
- The reported resultHis first paying user
- 1
The problem
A side project needs data a normal request cannot get.
Building a wishlist app, he needed product details from a retailer whose pages are drawn by JavaScript. Fetching the page did not return them.
- 2
The fix becomes the problem
Running a browser works. Hosting one is hard.
A real browser could read those pages, but keeping one running on a server was a problem of its own. That second problem is what he describes as the start of Browserless.
- 3
The search
He looks for people stuck in the same place.
In Puppeteer's active GitHub issues he finds developers asking how to run it on a VPS. He has lived that problem and can explain a way through it.
- 4
The first customer
He answers, and mentions what he built.
He answers the question and mentions his hosted alternative. He attributes his first paying user to that thread, and keeps helping in GitHub issues and Stack Overflow.
What to take from it
Find the conversation
before you plan the launch.
He could answer the question because he had already fought it. Knowing the problem is what made his reply useful rather than an advert.
The buyers were not waiting on a landing page. They were in an issue tracker, asking for exactly what he had built.
A support thread is not a place to drop an unrelated promotion. Answer the question; mention your product when it is the answer.
What remains unverified
One founder's account, told later.
This is a retrospective interview about an opportunity that began in 2017, not an audited record. We have not verified the original issue, the customer's payment, or which community rules applied then. Later in the interview he separates these early conversations from the content, newsletters and other channels the business used as it grew.
It does not show that posting in GitHub issues will work for your product today. The audience, how relevant your answer is and the community's current rules all matter.
Source: Growth Stories, interview with Browserless founder Joel Griffith . Paraphrased from the transcript in our research collection. The cover is drawn for this page, not a screenshot. This account is separate from the recorded Hunting Apps verdict.